Notes from Stephen, Wan, Kweilin, and Li

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Poverty in Afghanistan

From Wan: as I travel outside Kabul, I realize how unequal the "wealth " from donor countries have been. We see scores of young children with multiple buchets or pails in line and the water trickling out of a 4 inch pipe was hardly a trickle. It would take over half an hour to fill up a bucket. And then they carry it up the hill where they live in the mud huts .Water is a major problem here and especially in the outskirts. Education is a major problem here too . Yesterday in our drive into the hinterlands, we saw tents which acted as schools. We stopped at one just as the kids (all boys) were getting out. The teacher talked to us and told us the situation they are faces with. The school has 1600 students, divided into the morning and afternoon sessions.Each tent the size of the ones we get from Home Depot to park our cars, holds 200 kids. 50 to 60 in each class. So at any one time, half the school has to sit out in the sun on the gravel for their class. Even for those under the tent , only half have desks. The others sit on the floor too. Half the students have no notebooks or pencils.Each notebook cost 12 afganis which is about 25 cents US and of course this is beyound the reach of a lot of families whose income is less than US$30 a month.The teacher asked if we could help with notebooks, pencils and ballpens.We wanted to give cash to the teacher to buy for the students but the translator that it would be much better if we brought the notebooks to the school ourselves and distribute it out ourselves.Everywhere we went we met with such dire poverty. Kids at the age of 10 working at tire shops for 20 afganis a week, which is less than 50 cents US.we gave them money to buy icecream which cost 1 afgani each and they loved it. You feel you want to give everything you have just to relieve the poverty for a minute.

posted by Li at 7:29 PM